Dallas taught Dunham’s dance style, “a polyrhythmic style rooted in early Black dance that Dunham developed through her ethnographic research in the Caribbean in the 1930s,” well into her 90s at her studio in Basel, Switzerland. “You feel it like a religion. … It’s in our bloodline. You live with it when you teach it. You respect it. And then you give it to someone else, so they may have the honor of teaching it and seeing the genius of Dunham.” – The New York Times
Category: people
Inside The Flamboyant Self-Destruction Of Johnny Depp
“There are few examples of a movie-star implosion of Depp’s magnitude that have been so sudden and spectacular. … Over the course of four short years, Depp has spiraled from an A-list star responsible for more than $10 billion in worldwide box office to Hollywood persona non grata” — not least because of the calamitous defamation lawsuit he just lost. “It wasn’t just erratic and violent behavior that wrecked one of the world’s most bankable stars. It was his unquenchable thirst for revenge.” – The Hollywood Reporter
Sappho — How Much Do We Really Know About Her?
“No other woman from early antiquity has been so talked about, and in such conflicting terms. The sources are as sparse as the legends are manifold, and any attempt to distinguish between the two virtually hopeless. Every age has created its own Sappho. Some even invented a second in order to sidestep the contradictions of the stories.” Judith Schalansky sifts through it all. – The Paris Review
Did Orwell’s Early Death Save His Reputation?
Had Orwell lived even a few more years he would have been drawn into public discussions of Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-four and their meaning. And had he equalled his friend Cyril Connolly’s longevity and lived into the 1970s, he would have become embroiled in controversies like the Cold War, nuclear disarmament, feminism, decolonisation, Vietnam, immigration and, who knows, Northern Ireland. – Dublin Review of Books
The Mythification Of John Lennon
“Myths are for figures even greater than [legends]; gods. And John Lennon has indeed achieved a kind of deific immortality – thanks in part to the appropriation of his persona in works of fiction and drama. With portrayals of him that have cast him as everything from unemployed layabout to Labour Party leader, wise old fisherman to actual psychedelic godhead, Lennon’s life has been romanticised, rehashed and rewritten since his death, to the point where the myth is often more real than the man. … And the [process] began almost as soon as his life ended.” – BBC
Dean Of South Korean Contemporary Art, Suh Se Ok, Dead At 91
“A student of calligraphy, Suh and his [avant-garde] compatriots were intent on forging an experimental, distinctly Korean form of ink painting, eschewing the Japanese techniques that had held sway during its colonial rule of the peninsula, which ended in 1945. They were in dialogue with American and European postwar abstract painting movements such as Art Informel, while spurning their tools, unlike many of their Korean contemporaries.” – ARTnews
The Complicated Legacy Of James Beard (And What It Says About American Food Culture)
“In the decades that followed World War II, no public figure prosecuted the cause of introducing America to seasonality, freshness, and culinary pleasure with greater vigor than James Beard. Gay, bow-tied, effusive, charismatic, and possessed of a lavish appetite, Beard had the misfortune to live in an era at once bigoted, repressed, paranoid, abstemious, and uninterestingly dressed. Today he is best known for the awards dispensed by his eponymous foundation, which remain, 35 years after his death at the age of 81, the most prestigious in the American restaurant industry. But of the man himself, contemporary memory is fairly shallow: He exists mostly in outline, as the bald, long-dead bon vivant beaming out at America’s eaters from illustrations, portraits, and the obverse of the culinary medals that bear his name.” – The New Republic
Has The Childhood Home Of Jesus Christ Just Been Discovered?
Is this for real? Well, as archaeologist Ken Dark puts it, “I can be confident that it’s the house that the Byzantines believed, and was probably believed in the 4th century, to be Jesus’s childhood home.” – Artnet
Painter Buys $65,000 Worth Of Work Of Struggling Artists
Guy Stanley Philoche, 43, has dedicated himself to seeking out artists from around the world who are unable to make ends meet and has so far purchased more than 150 artworks for up to $500 each. His own pieces sell for up to $120,000, according to Cavalier Galleries. – CNN
A Forgotten Literary Star, And Anti-Fascist Activist, Is Finally Getting Her Due In Spain
The writer María Teresa Léon was a good buddy of Lorca, married to poet Rafael Alberti, and took part in rescuing art from the Prado as Franco bombed Madrid. Then she, and Alberti and many other anti-fascist writers, fled to live in exile in France and Italy – and her writing and her power were remembered less and less as the male writers’ fame grew. Now her memoir is being republished, with a new introduction and a new appreciation. – The Observer (UK)